Fear of this vaccine has been triggered by recent newspaper accounts of impurities found in some products. Although they are unfounded, every year some people still refuse the shot.

When that’s the case, they should learn how Dr. Frederick R. Klenner saved many patients from life-threatening viral infections, and the bite of a rattlesnake.

Why Dr. Klenner was never given the Nobel Prize in medicine is hard to understand. He was a family doctor in North Carolina. Unfortunately he wasn’t my doctor when I woke up one morning with the worst headache I’d ever experienced. I was in my final year at the Harvard Medical School and later that day I couldn’t move my legs. The diagnosis was poliomyelitis.

World-esteemed professors were close and available to treat me. But there was a problem. The polio vaccine wasn’t invented at that time. All they could do was watch the paralysis increase.

What Klenner would have prescribed will shock you. In 1949 he reported momentous news to a meeting of the American Medical Association. During an epidemic of polio the year before, he had cured 60 out of 60 patients suffering from this disease by using massive amounts of vitamin C, in some cases 300,000 milligrams (mg) of C daily. None of these patients was left with paralysis. Today, the recommended daily allowance of vitamin C is a mere 90 mg!

How a large group of American doctors could ignore this outstanding achievement boggles the mind. What is more unbelievable is, decades later, it is still collecting dust. This is in spite of the fact that this was only one of Klenner’s findings.

In The Clinical Guide to the Use of Vitamin C, Dr. Lendon Smith details the experiences of Dr. Klenner. He reports Dr. Klenner had cured case after case of viral disease by huge doses of C.

For instance, 60 years ago a seven-year-old boy had been ill for six weeks due to recurring attacks of influenza. He had been treated with sulfa, penicillin and small amounts of vitamin C, but suddenly he slipped into coma. Dr. Klenner quickly gave him an intravenous injection of 6,000 mg of vitamin C. Five minutes later he was awake. He received further injections and fully recovered in 24 hours. The patient was Dr. Klenner’s son.

Klenner also reported, in the journal Southern Medicine and Surgery, that injections of vitamin C had cured 42 cases of viral pneumonia. Later, in the same journal, he reported vitamin C could cure measles and chicken pox in 24 hours.

He also proved that patients suffering from acute and chronic hepatitis could have liver function tests return to normal after seven days of being treated with intravenous vitamin C. And for the bite of a rattlesnake, 60,000 mg can save a life.

This lack of recognition of new ideas is not new. Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis was ridiculed when he told doctors in Vienna that simply washing hands would save pregnant women from dying of puerperal sepsis. Closed minds have caused countless deaths.

Fortunately, by sheer luck, I was left with minimal loss of muscle function after months of therapy. I had no idea at the time that years later Drs. Linus Pauling and Sydney Bush would show high doses of vitamin C and lysine could also prevent heart attacks. This combination powder, called Medi-C Plus, is now available at health food stores and could save thousands of lives. See www.docgiff.com for more information.

It’s tragic that since reporting the value of Medi-C Plus, not a single cardiologist has supported this natural treatment. But humans are rarely receptive to new ideas.

I’ve had my flu shot because suffering from the flu is no fun. Influenza is like being hit by a ten-ton truck. It kills about 40,000 North Americans every year.

But since a flu shot is not 100% effective, I won’t forget Dr. Klenner’s advice if I develop full-blown influenza -- or happen to step on a rattlesnake.